Venturing into console gaming!

Well I know it's been a while since posting on TechSpot, but in between looking for a new place to live, meeting with potential new land lords and the drive times, doesn't make for a lot of free time. But during all this chaos I broke down and purchased myself a Sony Playstation 2 "fat boy" at Gamestop for $49.99!

It's a pretty sweet older system, came with one dual shock controller and the store even threw in a free 16MB memory card. I figured that with facing a move, I need to keep all my money right now, I was wanting a Playstation 3, but the cost just couldn't be justified. So I got a older Playstation 2, not a bad little system, I've been tinkering with it for two days now and I'm quite impressed with even the so called "older technology" of it.

Also I know the old Playstation 2 online stuff is over, it's not supported anymore, but I went ahead and purchased a network adapter for $12.99 anyways, for it was needed to make my system act like it was on steroids. With the network adapter I was able to install an old Maxtor 500 Gig hard drive to the Playstation 2! The Playstation formatted it for me, took about 45 minutes and installed HD-Loader 0.8c and set up the hard drive to have a 5 gig partition where all of my game stats and game saves can go. The rest of the hard drive is for copying the games I get to barrow from friends and family that might still have old Playstation 2 games just laying around and play those games without the need of a game disk.

My Son loves it, right away he likes the console gaming much better than PC gaming. We have had hours of good Father & Son time together, to be honest the kid is pretty damn good.

I know I didn't purchase the "latest & greatest" here, but this was within my current budget and to be honest I think I made a good choice, for this thing is real fun to play. So what if I cant watch Blu-Ray's on it, so I'm stuck with good ole DVD's, I can live with that. So what if I'm not linked to the Playstation online network, with the problems they have been having with their network and privacy issues, thank gosh I'm not hooked up, stand alone will work just fine for me.

The last thing I purchased is a cooling stand that the unit rests on and the stand blows cool air into it's vent ports. The cooling stand is at a Gamestop in Oakland California, I paid for it here in Sacramento and they will be doing a store to store transfer of it for me, when it comes in I can pick it up.

Well I'm off to try my hand at a little Soul Calibur III think I will choose to play Nightmare, kind of a freaky evil looking dude, but he is powerful!

If anyone out there can recommend some good Playstation 2 games "I'm all ears"!

That's very cool, my son and I spent a lot of time on the Nintendo and original Playstation when he was young. Looks like you've got a pretty good start on the library, one game we really enjoyed (PS1) was Rally Cross ... still have it and we fire it up every once in a while just for grins.

Speaking of Rally Cross, I always thought the Colin Mcrae rally games made a good showing for the PS1.

For the PS2 though, no doubt that the better quality games all arived at the latter end of its life time, in my opinion (maybe with the exeption of MGS2 and a few others though). One of my favorite PS2 games was Max Payne; if you like a good story line, Max Payne doesn't let you down there.

I like the Gran Turismo series, especially GT3 A-Spec which still had just a little arcade flavor to it. Thought GT4 was kind of tedious so my son and I tag teamed it to finish it. Still haven't pulled the trigger on GT5, was kind of ticked off about how long it was in development ... but I'll spring for it eventually.

Well when I was grocery shopping I noticed a brand new Gamestop in the plaza. I went in and checked it out, and of course came out with some new pre-owned games. I grabbed myself Rebel Raiders "Operation Nighthawk", World Series Of Poker 2008, American Choppers, Kengo "Master Of The Bushido", Suzuki TT Superbikers Racing & Tony Hawk pro Skater 3! All these older titles came to around $14.00, can't beat cheap!

Also I have a question, is the Sony Playstation 2 backwards compatible, can it play Playstation 1 games? For the very attractive lady that was helping me at Gamestop didn't know, I guess her attractiveness made up for her lack of knowledge.....lol!

Well that information about needing a PS1 memory card is good to know. I wonder if I even need it, seeing that I have that 500 Gig hard drive installed and I'm using 5 Gig's of the drive which I set up a file folder to save everything, the hard drives save file is emulating a stock memory card. But I might just pick up a PS1 memory card, just to be on the safe side. Gamestop discontinued all PS1 gear a long time ago, they don't even carry the games, so I will have to be resourceful to find that card.

Also I just spent 3 hours playing that Suzuki TT Super bike game, talk about a real kick in the pants of a good time. It appears that for the moment, I'm enjoying the motorcycle games a little bit better than the car games right now.

My eye's are fried, my mind is mush and my thumbs hurt, it's like after 2:00am here and I'm off to bed, maybe I will have dreams about racing around the Isle of Mann on a super TT bike!

Hey Zen, If your into any RPG games The Final Fantasy series was something i always enjoyed while playing on my Ps2. Most of them are a big long but still fun :]

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I'll second that.

Final Fantasy 10 (X) was the bee's knees for the series when it came out. Final Fantasy 12 (XII), in my opinion, was one of the best games ever made for the PS2. It's like it squeezed every drop out of the console itself.

Thanks for the recommendations, I will have to pick up some Final Fantasy games, next time I make a run to Gamestop. I know I saw several Final Fantasy titles in their pre-owned section, a couple of them in their "under $4.99 & $9.99 sections"!

I know most of you have already seen a Playstation 2 system, and already know what it looks like. But I figured I would show off my new/used system off anyways!

This first shot is a wide angle shot, showing off the system as a whole. The PS-2 is located on my living rooms coffee table, I really appreciate how the system blends in nicely with the color theme I have going on in the living room, almost is undetectable on the second black tier.

This shot is one of just the console, it's the "fat boy" deck, not the slim line version!

This is a real "no brainer" just one of two matching dual shock controllers!

This shot is showing off the sound systems sub-woofer, the sound system is made by a company called Harman/Kardon and puts out 150 Watts of sound.

And the last shot, I guess one can't have to many games for ones system. My new CD vault case is almost full, I only have like 7-8 more slips for CD's to call home, any more than that, I'm buying a new CD vault.

Thanks for joining me on this Playstation 2 showcase, I know it was probably nothing special to most, but it meant something to me!

Just got home from doing some shopping Picked up some more Playstation 2 games. I picked up 2 Final Fantasy titles meant for the PS2. Also I grabbed the original PS1 Jeopardy game starring Alex Trebeck and Wheel of Fortune starring Vanna White. To save the games proper, I stopped by a friends house, who sold his PS1 a long time go, but kept several old 8MB memory cards, he gave me one, as so I can save those PS1 "game saves" to. My friend also kicked down a free PS2 game, he gave me Monopoly.

Got to say that my game library is shaping up quite nicely, but there again we just can never have enough!

Congrats on the system, when i read you got the PS2 Phat i was gonna recommend HDloader but i see you beat me to the punch!

I've got two questions for you though! and then a few recommendations .

First of all how did you set up the 5g partition for saves, that sounds pretty freakin sweet, second of all does your playstation recognize all 500g? i recall reading when i softmodded my ps2 that the max it could support was 80g, what model HDD are you using?

One thing i will say Zen, I'll give you many good lucks and good wishes with your "fat boy". They arn't well know for their longevity, I have to beat the crap out of mine just to get it to read a disc and all while i hardly ever use it.

I've had a few in the past that have gone this way also. They don't seem to fully break for some reason, for me, they just "half" break to the point where you're pulling your hair out trying to get a game out of it.

First of all how did you set up the 5g partition for saves, that sounds pretty freakin sweet, second of all does your playstation recognize all 500g?

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Well first give me a little time to "double check' my work, I barely got through that whole setting up that 5 Gig file thing, the system was acting very "buggy" at that time and I think I got through it with a hope and a prayer.

Next as far as hard drive sizes that a PS2 system will recognize, there are a lot of different answers to this out there on the net. We got answers like 40 Gigs, 80 Gigs, 200 Gigs, 400 Gigs and up to 500 Gigs but no more. As far as for me, while researching this I found some information that the PS 2 system can recognize up to 500 Gigs top's. I have run into a problem with this for yes, I installed a nice old Maxtor 500 Gig, 7200 RPM, I.D.E. hard drive into the unit via the network interface adapter. But here's the catch, the PS2 is only seeing 350 Gigs of the total drive. I have no clue as to why I have 150 Gigs missing, but hay, I'm not going to try and fight it, it is what it is, I am just thankful that I got 350 Gigs out of it.

As far as your recommendation I think next time I'm at one of my local Gamestop's, I'm going to look for that Street Fighter Anniversary Edition, sounds like something that is right up my alley.

Well I have some new information to report in regards to my new purchase of a gently used Playstation 2 system.

Tonight I had a couple of my good friends over at my house, one of them is named Craig. Well Craig is a sneaky little devil, for when I called him earlier in the day and poised him the invite, I let it slip out about my new ventures in console gaming. He started asking me simple but unknown to me important questions.

Well Craig arrived around 7:00pm, while entering I noticed a medium sized card board box. He put it on my kitchen table and said "Aaron have at it, it's all yours"! I opened it and pulled out two black colored matching Playstation 2 wireless controllers that operate on a 2.4 gig frequency, they are made by Katana, they appear to be a licensed partner of Sony for the Playstation logo was on the controllers.

Next I pulled a Sony Playstation 2 "Multi Tap" out of the box, this device allows more stuff to be connected to your system. The Multi Tap supports additional game controllers to be connected and also supports the memory cards.

Next I grabbed an actual Playstation 2 DVD remote control, lots of little buttons on that thing, with actual game controller buttons on it, like the "X" & "Circle" & "Square" & "Triangle". It came with a little black receiver that connects to the machine via a controller port. It works, put two AAA batteries in it and we were off to the races.

Then I found 4 Playstation 2 8MB memory cards in a zip lock baggy, I asked him are these for me as well? yup, their yours pal.....

Lastly he had about 8 old Playstation 2 games tucked away in one of the corners of the box, those were mine as well. Some of the titles are like "ATV Off Road Fury 3" and "ATV Off Road Fury 4" and "Onjmusha Warlords" and "Need For Speed Hot Pursuit" and the regular "Need For Speed" and "NASCAR 2007" and so on. Also Craig told me that he might have an original Playstation 1 in his attic, with about 20 very old games with it, if he can find it he will make sure it lands into my hands.

So I guess the video game God's have smiled down upon me, I am very lucky to have been given such a wonderful gift, or should I say gifts from a great friend......."thanks Craig, hope your in bed, you got to work tomorrow"!